By: Shilpi Mohanty
On Monday, April 14th at 9:30 AM, Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin rocket took flight to space from Blue Origin’s West Texas facility. The passengers were Katy Perry, a singer; Lauren Sanchez, Jeff Bezos’ fiancée; Gayle King, a CBS anchor; Amanda Nguyen, an activist; producer Kerianne Flynn; and Aisha Bowe, a NASA rocket scientist (Molloy). They all went 62 miles above Earth, and the total flight duration was 11 minutes (Molloy). The entire flight was broadcast on CBS. The passengers experienced only a few moments of weightlessness before coming back down (Molloy).
This event was controversial with many varied opinions. Many people supported it and thought it was an advancement that people should dream big—such as Khloé Kardashian (Molloy). On the other hand, others thought this event shouldn’t have happened, especially because of the timing, like Tanya Harrison, part of the Outer Space Institute Experts Network. Tanya Harrison said, “It’s like the Real Housewives go to Mars,” and, “It’s the oligarchy in space—read the room, the timing is terrible ” (Molloy). I agree with Tanya that this blastoff should not have occurred in the first place.
This entire experience felt like a slap in the face to me. As a child, I dreamed of going to space and walking on the moon. The intensive training kept me away from actually pursuing this dream, and this stunt made me feel sick to my stomach. We went from NASA astronauts—who were trained for at least months—going into space for scientific discoveries, to female celebrities with no background going into space for entertainment. This is a statement disregarding the effort of initiating space explorations and degrading it to entertainment for the rich, rather than scientific exploration.
It portrays that money is truly power and anything is possible. People can bypass regulations for becoming astronauts that go into space by having millions of dollars and fame. NASA has so many requirements for even being considered as an astronaut, such as having citizenship, having a Master’s degree in a STEM field, having two years of professional experience that is related to being an astronaut or having 1,000 hours as a pilot, and passing the NASA astronaut physical (Deiss). These requirements are extensive, which makes sense, as we know so little about space exploration that anything can go wrong at any time. But now, with this event and how these five women went up to space without fulfilling any of the requirements to be an astronaut, it seems like anyone can easily go up to space and belittle the role of astronauts and how they are significant to exploring space.
Furthermore, this stunt is showing how blind the five women who went up are to current events. Recently, Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore came back to Earth after nine months of being in space, rather than eight days. This stunt shows that they didn’t think about that scenario and how it took light away from what Sunita Williams went through. Also, it reduces the value of women and perpetuates the stereotype that women can be used as eye candy for marketing purposes. This stunt was using five women to advertise space travel with Blue Origin. It makes it even worse because currently, women’s rights are in question through the debate over abortion and how miscarriage is potentially now considered a crime.
Additionally, this shows that it is okay to be blasé about environmental impacts on Earth to have space tourism as a new common way to travel (Krajick). Rockets getting launched into space have a lot of negative impacts (Krajick). The blastoff of the rocket leads to temporary pollution clouds from fuel combustion (Krajick). Also, there is more debris through rocket blastoff (Krajick). It utilizes at least a million dollars just to entertain the rich (Krajick). This money could have been used to help the working class in millions of ways, such as health inequity.
In conclusion, this recent Blue Origin launch highlights the growing divide between true scientific exploration and elitist entertainment disguised as progress. What was once a noble pursuit that was only for highly trained astronauts has been cheapened by celebrity tourism and corporate spectacle. It sends a troubling message that wealth and status can override years of education, dedication, and physical preparation. The timing, the environmental disregard, and the lack of awareness around ongoing social and scientific issues only deepen the disconnect. Space travel should be about collective advancement, not personal branding—and right now, it’s clear we’ve lost sight of that.